Internal vs External… Dogear vs. Del.icio.us.
As the show grew in popularity, the need to focus on external content grew. And the need to address the whole internet as an audience grew. And the need to find a way to share links outside IBM became apparent. The hosts kinda toyed with the idea of using Del.icio.us as a tagging mechanism. They invited the users to tag there. But they never took a strong stance that all tags should go there.
With the launch of this new podcast site, I’ve explicitly and directly put a stake in the ground, saying that we should only have our bookmarks in Del.icio.us. By doing this, we defrag our tag stream onto a united tagging platform. This helps us generate critical mass among our listeners.
If half of our tags are inside IBM and half of them outside IBM, then people outside IBM (outside IBM’s firewall) will not be able to access those tags prior to the show. Also, IBMers will have to go to two places to track tags. A unified tag stream is what is needed.
What say you?
Sincerely yours,
- Matt Simpson
April 14th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Wow, this is a tough one. Our namesake is Dogear, but that is enterprise specific. I do tag on del.icio.us and do much more often based on not always being on the IBM network. There are people outside of IBM who use Dogear- but we can’t see those tags. So I guess del.icio.us it is!
April 15th, 2008 at 9:16 am
I’m OK with only using del.icio.us - I certainly have never understood how to use Digg for this.
The only issue is that sometime there might be a tool or post that is only visible on the inside (like, currently, the Firefox extension we mentioned in ep #47). In that case I’d obviously tag internally, and it is still worth mentioning.
April 15th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I still say that if something is worth mentioning on the show, that it should be tagged out here on the internet (i.e. on Del.icio.us). Otherwise, if it’s sensitive and only taggable inside the firewall, we probably shouldn’t be podcasting about it outside the firewall.
I think it’s okay to tag something via Del.icio.us even though not everyone on the internet can access it. It creates the right kind of tension.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
my .02 — we should be doing both. tagging in dogear helps to improve the search criteria and provides for further social networking within our walled garden. tagging in an externally discoverable manner allows for our listeners to quickly find the history and share their interests with us. as a point of discussion, aren’t all of the show notes another kind of tagging? if that’s the case, are we then a triple tagging threat?
April 16th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
one more quick tag to see if we’re still in the Greenland timezone.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I think we have concluded that we are fundamentally an internet show.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
we are we are!!!
May 9th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I wonder why we get so hung up about asking for sponsorship. Podcasters need money too